1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to contactless communication methods and systems capable of communicating with plural types of noncontact IC cards having different access procedures for communications therewith, respectively.
2. Description of the Related Art
Reader/writer systems have a reader/writer as a contactless communication device for carrying out radio data communications with noncontact information carriers, such as noncontact IC cards and noncontact IC tags. The reader/writer systems are controlled by an information processing unit, such as a computer, for executing application programs that allow the information processing unit to carry out information processing meeting applications of the reader/writer systems, such as user's needs.
A typical example of the reader/writer systems causes a reader/writer to wirelessly communicate with a noncontact IC card as a noncontact information carrier in response to an instruction output from a computer and to read out information, which corresponds to the instruction, stored in the noncontact IC card, thereby transferring the readout information to the computer.
For example, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-157038, an application program 6a stored in a memory of a personal computer 3 sends a secret command to an IC card reader/writer 2 so that an OK command is transferred from the reader/writer 2. The OK command allows the application program 6a to cause the IC card reader/writer 2 to read/write data out/into an IC card 1.
As described above, a computer used to the reader/writer systems has a memory in which an application program is stored. The computer runs the application program so that the application program causes the reader/writer to execute radio data communications with noncontact IC cards. Specifically, when an event is generated in the computer, the application program causes the reader/writer to:                send, to a noncontact IC card, a request to return data corresponding to the event, to receive the data returned from the noncontact IC card;        receive the data returned from the noncontact IC card; and        send the data to the computer.        
That is, the application program causes the reader/writer to repeatedly execute the sending and receiving operations set forth above in response to occurrences of events.
This makes the application program considerably complicated.
In addition, there are plural types of noncontact IC cards, and they have different processing procedures and usable commands. This results in that the plural types of noncontact IC cards require a plurality of application programs meeting specifications of the plural types of noncontact IC cards.